West Nile virus battle plan discussed

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

The possibility that West Nile virus could migrate across the Pacific appears remote, but state health officials here are preparing to battle the sometimes-fatal disease that has caused a public health crisis on the Mainland.

State epidemiologist Dr. Paul Effler met yesterday with University of Hawai'i medical school and public health experts and state lab and communicable disease officials to discuss how to monitor the disease.

Illinois yesterday reported its first patient with West Nile virus and six new cases were diagnosed in Mississippi, bringing that state's total to 28, state health officials said. The majority of the Mississippi cases are near the Louisiana border. Louisiana has reported 71 cases, including five deaths. The Illinois patient contracted the disease near Chicago.

Since West Nile was first detected in New York in 1999, it steadily has spread to 31 of the 33 states east of the Rocky Mountains, sparing only Kansas and South Carolina. There have been 185 confirmed human cases of the virus, including 20 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus causes flulike illness that sometimes leads to a brain inflammation called encephalitis. It is spread by mosquitoes and carried by dozens of species of birds.

Infected mosquitoes carry the virus in their saliva and pass it on when they bite.

"I think we need to be prepared for it, but at the same time I wouldn't have undue concern," Effler said yesterday. "If it was able to jump from West Africa to New York there is the possibility it could make it to Hawai'i. The geographic distance is helpful ... but you can't rest on that."

Effler said there are several ways that the virus could reach Hawai'i:

• In an infected person who would then pass it when bitten by a mosquito.
• In an infected bird shipped to the Islands.
• In an infected migratory bird.

Yesterday's meeting at the state lab in Pearl City was to help officials create a plan to test birds for the virus. On the Mainland, officials have established "dead bird reporting" in which dead birds are regularly tested for the virus, Effler said.

But Effler said that state vector control officials already have begun mosquito control spraying similar to what they did last summer when dengue fever broke out.

If the virus was found in Hawai'i, spraying would be a primary form of control, Effler said.

Bloomberg News Service contributed to this report.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.